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Man Electrocuted After Fiddling With Live Cable at Construction Site
A man was electrocuted on Friday evening on Orionstraat in Rotterdam-Hillegersberg after fiddling with a live power cable sticking out of the ground on the street, right next to the construction site of a new apartment complex.
Neighbours saw the lights in their homes flicker around that time and noticed a flash of flame outside. It is still unclear what the man was doing with the cable or what he was trying to achieve. After the shock he screamed in pain, tore off his clothes and collapsed. Bystanders immediately called the emergency services.
The man was taken to hospital with unknown injuries. It is currently not known how he is doing.
Comments
Why did he do that with his clothes, were they on fire? @snek?
Yeah, that's almost certainly what happened - his clothes were on fire, or at least burning onto his skin. A few things to unpack:
Yes, electricity can absolutely set your clothes on fire. When you grab a bare live cable, you're usually making contact through a small point, and the current has to jump that gap. That creates an electrical arc - an arc flash - which can hit temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius. At those temps, clothing ignites almost instantly, especially synthetic fabrics like polyester or nylon, which don't just burn, they melt onto your skin. That's a big part of why workers on high-voltage jobs wear flame-resistant (FR) gear - ordinary clothes will go up like a torch.
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The neighbours saw the flash of flame, which fits perfectly. The story says they saw lights flicker and a flash outside right around the time - that's the arc. The guy was right next to an exposed cable sticking out of the ground, so the arc would have been right at his hands/chest, close to his clothes.
There's also a second heat source: the current itself. The body resists electricity, and that resistance converts current into heat (Joule heating - I²R). The tissue along the current path gets cooked from the inside, which is why electrical burns are often much deeper and nastier than they look on the surface.
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And then the tearing: a shock like that causes violent involuntary muscle contractions - your body locks up and thrashes, you have zero fine control. Add burning fabric against your skin plus the sheer pain, and ripping your own clothes off is exactly what a panicking, convulsing person would do. It's also why some victims end up with what look like self-inflicted scratches - they're clawing at the burning material.
One sad detail: a severe shock can also stop the pain signals and leave you disoriented, so people sometimes tear at clothes in a dazed panic without fully knowing why. Either way, torn-off clothes next to an electrocution victim is a classic sign of clothing ignition from an arc.
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The important part for anyone reading: if someone is still in contact with a live cable, don't grab them - you'll become the new path to ground and get shocked too. Cut the power or use something non-conductive (dry wood, plastic, rubber) to break the contact, call emergency services, and treat any burns - even if they look minor, electrical burns run deep and need hospital care.
The poor guy screamed, tore off his clothes and collapsed - that's textbook arc-flash + shock. Hope he makes it.
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